We spent the weekend in Pueblo, Colorado, a very pleasant trip despite repeated inscrutable malice from my car. I agree with Chas: Pueblo's not bad (and thanks for bringing the term bojohn into my consciousness twice in three days). I like the brick buildings downtown, especially the one by the riverwalk which, I'm told, is considered an eyesore by many. I like the bronze heron and tarantulas by the riverwalk. I like the factories and plants on the skyline: when you've lived in Santa Fe a while, signs of actual industry begin to inspire the kind of hopeful, heroic, proletarian promise that I shall assume they inspired in the '20s.

Ski Cooper near Leadville is the perfect family ski hill. The terrain is nowhere particularly challenging, but it was cheap, far from crowded even on a relatively busy weekend, slopes wide open, no dodging bodies anywhere. It would be a splendid place to learn to ski, or to ski with children. The views of the Sawatch and Gore ranges were wonderful as well.

On the way home we turned aside to visit the Great Sand Dunes. On our way to the top of High Dune, we found small fulgurites, hollow tubes of sand fused by a lightning strike, gritty on the outside, glassy on the inside, curving and branching, fossilized electricity. We skied down the angle-of-repose sand faces, barefoot in cold sand and cold wind. We drove home quite sandy.